Impacts of incarceration

Incarceration negatively impacts people on both sides of prison, jail, and detention center walls. Many people in confinement are denied access to adequate living conditions, adequate medical and mental health care, meaningful education, and legal and religious materials. Upon return to the community, people are faced with multiple obstacles and lack of access to community-based reentry services.

AFSC works to ameliorate these conditions, both through direct work with people in prison and through advocacy at the state and federal level. AFSC also lifts up the stories of resilience, perseverance, and resistance from people living behind bars.

Survivors Speak is a collection of testimonies of prisoners subjected to cruel treatment or who have witnessed abuses committed against others while held in U.S. custody. Violations of human rights include inadequate health care and medical treatment, placement in solitary confinement, sexual and physical abuse, psychological abuse, and unsanitary housing.

As a hunger strike by immigrants detained at the Tacoma, Wash., Northwest Detention Center run by the private-prison corporation GEO Group entered its second week, hundreds of friends, neighbors, and co-workers rallied outside the center to support their demands.

The unprecedented protest began March 7, when 1,200 detainees being held for deportation began a hunger strike and work stoppage. They are protesting the ongoing deportations overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and inhumane conditions at the center, which is owned and operated by GEO Group.

International treaties, conventions, and declarations provide basic guidelines for the treatment of prisoners. However, those guidelines are routinely ignored by the U.S. criminal justice system. “Inalienable rights: Applying international human rights standards to the U.S. criminal justice system” is meant to help illuminate—and eliminate—this hypocritical double standard.

Educate yourselves about mass incarceration, provide support to people returning from prison, and get behind prison walls to find out how you can really help.

Who we are

AFSC is a Quaker organization devoted to service, development, and peace programs throughout the world. Our work is based on the belief in the worth of every person, and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice. Learn more

Where we work

AFSC has offices around the world. To see a complete list see the Where We Work page.